HAVANA: A woman whose disabled son was kidnapped and murdered by soldiers was among a group of witnesses to testify on Saturday at peace talks in Cuba between FARC rebels and the Colombian government.
"This is an unprecedented step of immense significance," President Juan Manuel Santos said in Bogota ahead of the testimony of the 12 witnesses, the first time victims of Colombia's five-decade armed conflict have addressed the talks.
The closed-door hearing started at 9:00 am (1300 GMT) in a residential complex in Havana that normally hosts visiting foreign dignitaries.
Reparations for victims is one of the most sensitive items on a six-point agenda for the talks in the Cuban capital because each side blames the other for violence that has killed 220,000 people and caused more than five million others to flee their homes.
The dozen witnesses the first of a group of 60 who will testify include people who have lost loved ones in some of the worst massacres that have rocked Colombia in recent years.
The massacres were committed by leftist rebels, police and soldiers, far-right paramilitary groups, and drug traffickers, all related to the broader conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).
Some of the witnesses were coming face to face with the leaders of the perpetrators for the first time Saturday.
One of those testifying is Leyner Palacios, leader of a group of people whose relatives were slaughtered in the so-called Bojaya Massacre in 2002, according to the committee in charge of choosing witnesses.
In the western town of Bojaya, "79 people who sought refuge in a church died. The FARC launched a cylinder bomb amid a clash with a paramilitary group," said the committee.
Another witness is Luz Marina Bernal, whose 26-year-old intellectually disabled son was kidnapped and murdered in 2008 by soldiers who portrayed him afterward as a rebel killed in combat.
The witnesses planned to hold a press conference at 6:00 pm, Cuba's foreign affairs ministry said.
The Colombian government and the FARC have reached deals on three points of the six-point peace agenda: land reform, political participation for the rebels and fighting the drug trafficking that has fueled the conflict.
The other points left to address are disarmament and the mechanism by which the final peace deal will be adopted.
Founded in 1964, the FARC today has about 8,000 fighters and is the largest of the guerrilla groups waging Latin America's longest-running armed conflict.
Santos has made peace deals with the FARC and fellow rebel group the National Liberation Army (ELN) his top political priority.
He took the oath of office this month for a second four-year term vowing to finally end the conflict, after an election campaign widely viewed as a referendum on the peace process.
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